C is for computer woes

Last night, I couldn’t get my computer to start. Pushed the power button — no light, no whirring, no lovely Mac “bong!” Tried resetting the PMU (power management unit), using a different power cord, reseating RAM cards and the battery. No dice. The power supply is dead.

Nearby, we have an Apple specialist store, Double-Click, a licensed service provider, and I figured I’d have better luck with them than the actual Mac store, since my Genius friend told me they wouldn’t check a Vintage Mac in for repairs. (Seven years? Vintage? *sigh*) They told me this morning that Apple won’t ship them replacement power units. However, it was a small matter for them to pop the hard drive and put it in an external case for me. Now it’s hooked up to one of the other computers in the household, letting me access all of my data and passwords. Yay!

The question is how long it’s feasible for me to work like this. I think the time table for upgrading my computer just got moved up.

Also, thinking about it — it’s also partly because I don’t want to be too much a part of the consumer culture. As long as the one I have is working, why throw it away, having to deal with a huge mass of recycling or trash, and buy another, which requires factories, pollution, transportation, and so forth? This, by the way, is also why I have T-shirts older than my marriage. 😉

Hugs on the computer woes. At least you were able to get the data. I upgraded my laptop after four years because the fan started getting really, really loud. I worried I wouldn’t be able to turn it on one of these days. Computers have much of our lives on them (pictures, passwords, documents, taxes, recipes, games) and they just don’t last as long as we’d like. I’ve had my desktop computer in storage for three years. I’m hoping it will still turn on when I spring it in June.